Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday January 26, 2014 @06:27AM
from the how-long-would-you-last? dept.

MojoKid writes "There's no disputing that Bill Gates is blessed with a brilliant mind. Sure, he dropped out of Harvard College, but he got accepted into the elite institution of higher learning in the first place. Leading into his college career, Gates scored 1,590 out of 1,600 on the SAT. The rest is history — he went on to co-found Microsoft, built a net worth that's in the billions ($76.8 billion at last count), and now spends his time on his philanthropic efforts. Regardless, it took 23-year-old Magnus Carlsen, a "grandmaster" Chess player since the age of 13 and new world Chess champion, just 71 seconds to defeat Gates in a friendly game of Chess on a Norwegian television show. It takes longer to heat up a cup of water in the microwave."

I'm sorry, but first off - Magnus Carlsen has been an extremely well known chess player since 2004. Justin Bieber was discovered when? 2008?

Secondly, while Bieber is famous for being famous.. Carlsen is famous for using his brain and becoming the world champion of chess. He built his career around his brain. Yes, some fashion agency also discovered his good looks and started sponsoring him and using him as a model - but that's not his main work. It's a hobby thing on the side. Good for him.

For those slightly interested in chess, but not interested enough to normally follow ratings and such - take a look at: http://2700chess.com/ [2700chess.com] for the up to date live ratings.

Aronian is doing a massive jump these days due to Tata Steel. I'm guessing the next WCC match will be between Carlsen and Aronian. They're typically rather evenly matched.

It was a Rapid game where Carlsen only had half the time to make his moves than Gates had, but neither had very much time at all. Gates was under no illusions as to his chances either - he considered the result to be a forgone conclusion.

And how long does it take before you can actually use it? Maybe the desktop appears after 8 seconds, but the system is still configuring itself and, well, basically finishing the booting process, the antivirus system is still setting itself up, etcetera. Meanwhile you're clicking on icons and nothing happens, or at the very least it's extremely sluggish. At least that's what earlier versions of Windows were like, I haven't actually had the... err... pleasure to try Windows 8, so this is a genuine question.

Sorry my friend, I am not a fan of Microsoft at all but I lived through this period and there definitely a time before the deal between Microsoft and IBM and a time after. The deal was a watershed. It changed everything.

The area before that deal was one of fragmentation and hobbyists on the personal computer front, and very expensive minis and mainframes on the business front. The only capable personal computer was the Apple ][ which was a significant business success. It had a modicum of business software, one of which was VisiCalc [wikipedia.org]. This software package alone, the first spreadsheet for PCs, probably motivated IBM to build their own PC.In 1981, Apple were so sure of themselves that they ran adverts Welcoming IBM to the world of Personal Computers [historyvshollywood.com]. Apart from the Apple ][ there were a plethora of 8-bit hobbyist computers, often based on the Z-80 or one of its variants like the Sinclair. These were cheap. Apple ][ were expensive. Apple was not interested in licensing their software or hardware.

Normally IBM should have simply paid for an OS outright or developed one themselves. They made that deal with Microsoft which ensured that MS would retain the most important property rights, which allowed them to sell MS-DOS to compatible PC builders. Nobody at IBM had foreseen the rise of compatible PC makers. Bill Gates had. By 1986 or so, capable PCs were everywhere. The hardware was simple, they were all compatible to a high degree to the business-friendly IBM PC, they could all run the same software, and they were cheap. Nobody bought an Apple ][ anymore. The 8-bit hobbyist computers had all but disappeared.

Without that deal compatible PCs would simply not have existed. I completely concur with the notion that this is the most important *deal* in the history of software.

Please come up with an alternative *deal* with an higher significance if you do not agree (and not a mere link to google.com)